THE coronavirus is now a "serious and imminent threat" to the British public, the health secretary has declared this morning.

The announcement by Matt Hancock gives the Government power to forcibly quarantine anyone with the virus, and they will not be free to leave.

A spokesman said: "Our infection control procedures are world leading and the NHS is well prepared to deal with novel coronavirus.

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"We are strengthening our regulations so we can keep individuals in supported isolation for their own safety and if public health professionals consider they may be at risk of spreading the virus to other members of the public.

"This measure will rightly make it easier for health professionals to help keep people safe across the country."

It comes after a Hove man who caught coronavirus in Singapore appears to be linked to at least seven other confirmed cases in England, France and Spain.

Health officials are not confirming a link or giving detail on his relationship to the other people diagnosed with the illness, but he is reported to be a middle-aged British man and is understood to have been the first UK national to contract the disease.

There are now four confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK, with this man having been the third to test positive.

A Department of Health statement said this morning: "The Secretary of State has made regulations to ensure that the public are protected as far as possible from the transmission of the virus.

"The Secretary of State declares that the incidence or transmission of novel Coronavirus constitutes a serious and imminent threat to public health, and the measures outlined in these regulations are considered as an effective means of delaying or preventing further transmission of the virus."

Mr Hancock has also designated Arrowe Park Hospital in the Wirral, and Kents Hill Park in Milton Keynes, where Britons evacuated from Wuhan have been transferred to, as 'isolation' facilities.

Wuhan and Hubei province, where the virus originated, have also been declared an 'infected area' by the health secretary.

The announcement comes as a British 'super spreader' is feared to have infected at least seven others with the coronavirus, prompting the emergency testing of hundreds of people on his flights, ski break and even his local pub.

The businessman is at the centre of a web of cases stretching across the UK, France and Spain after he apparently contracted the virus during a four-day trip to Singapore for a sales conference for gas analysis company Servomex.

The man in his fifties then jetted from south-east Asia to the Alps to ski in Les Contamines-Montjoie in late January where two more Britons became infected despite the 'super spreader' not having any cold or flu-like symptoms.

Britain's health authorities have also contacted 183 passengers and six crew on an Easyjet flight then taken by the unnamed man from Geneva to London, warning that they could be infected.

Five staff at The Grenadier in Hove, his local pub, have been instructed to self-isolate for a fortnight after he went there for a pint on Saturday February 1.

And a secondary schoolchild has also been told to stay at home for two week amid fears he came into contact with the so-called "super spreader".

Officials have desperately tried to stop further spread with a cross-border hunt for all the hundreds of people he may have had contact with.

Today nine Britons have been confirmed to have the killer virus - five in France, one in Japan, one in Spain and two in the UK.

Two others in the UK are ill, but they are believed to be Chinese nationals holidaying in Yorkshire.

More than 900 people have died and 37,000 have become infected since the outbreak began in the Chinese city of Wuhan, which has been placed in lockdown to curb the spread - an evacuation flight landed at RAF Brize Norton yesterday.

Public Health England is under pressure to reveal where the so-called "super spreader" had been and the full extent of the numbers under observation.

The task has been made more difficult because the patient, from Hove, interrupted his return from Singapore to Britain by taking a four-day break in the French Alps.